when your mocking someone else's intelligence you might want to work on your homophones. why would you first tweet whatever. first you got it right and then you got it wrong. how is that possible. brown quickly deleted his tweet but the damage was done. lance armstrong admitted to doping but when he admitted to b b. at least he wasn't like anthony wiener who tweeted photos of himself. i.i'm done talking now. >> jennifer: your tweets are a tough act to follow, and the numbers bear me out on that.

someone is always in the war room. check us out online. you can check out our twitter feet, our facebook page and exclusive web extras, and thank you to you all for joining us here in "the war room." have a great night and we'll see you back here tomorrow. [ ♪ music ♪ ] >> cenk: welcome to the "the young turks." we have an interesting show for you tonight. we have madness in the middle east. i know you're used to that but we have massacres in syria and riots in egypt. we'll one of the top experts in the country on that. >> i have decided to declare a state of emergency in in the provinces. [ yelling ] >> cenk: and then the great

grandson of elron hubbard comes back on the show. i want to ask him what does scientology have in store for some of the celebrities like katie holmes and what is it like to live in a family so scared by scientology. >> it was a subject we never talked about at the kids table of the family reunion but he was my great grandfather. l. ron hubbard. >> cenk: an then did you know that the nfl is a non-profit? wait until you find out how much they're paying their current ceo and past ceo when they're not paying any taxes. great story, great show. go time. [ ♪ theme music ♪ ]

>> cenk: all right, welcome to "the young turks." so now we've got a lot of trouble in the middle east. for example in syria we have yet normas kerr. this one in alepo. at least 65 bodies found by a riverbed up to as many as 80 now people are reporting. they were brought to that school that you're seeing now and people are picking through to see who was massacred there. their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were shot in the head. now, one more story about syria iran has jumped in the mix here, in aid to the ayatollah said syria plays a very key role in supporting or god forbid destabilizing the resistance front. for this reasons an attack on syria is considered an attack on iran and iran's allies. the reason why that is

devastating is if there is any action taken in syria here we go. it's a much larger war. these are not good times in the middle east, and it is significant trouble, but also in egypt we have trouble there. we had a curfew imposed in three different cities by their leader mohammed morsi. here is more on that story. >> violence on the anniversary of one of the bloodiest days of the egyptian revolution. the tear gas was so intense it covered downtown cairo with plume of smoke. protesters are still angry with a police force that still has not changed it's ways and has not pulled back, and pulled a journalist hostage until activists were able to take him to hospital. the mean opposition blocked the president's invite. >> cenk: so we've had riots, 52 people killed. we had 178 arrested recently.

those are protesters. now the curfew, and the basically marshal law affects three provinces in egypt. it is a nightly curfew and allows for military arrests of civilians. these are exactly the civil rights that they fought for. there was an attack for three state hours and no security showed up. that is fascinating. they sent out tweets saying sos if anyone knows anyone in military or police or government please send help. january 28th, egypt but no such help was sent for over three hours. in fact, they were eventually rescued by protesters. isn't that interesting? people that are unknown assailants go in, fire in the air, loot the hotel. as they do that en masse protesters come in and help the tourists in the hotel help the

people in the hotel to get them to safety. so, in fact, here is a news report on that saying, anti-government demonstrators secured the besieged hotel and helped hotel guests flee until they were safely in taxis to the airport, as the police and army failed to come to their aid. the protesters also helped the security forces in arresting 12 people who were attempting to loot the downtown cairo hotel. now, that's really relevant because obvious times you'll hear the morsi government say the protesterrers are causing trouble and violence. but in reality here they were stopping the violence and helping when authorities wouldn't. now one final sense of forboding and doom here in egypt the defense minister says failure to resolve the situation could lead to grave repercussions if the

political forces do not act. it could lead to a collapse of the state and threaten future generations. that is not good news. let's bring in one of the top experts from michigan. he's the author of "engaging the muslim world," so, let's start with egypt. now, this is a complicated situation. you have mohammed morsi who did win the election. on the other hand we seem to be here in the united states helping morsi selling military equipment to him as we speak. what do we make of morsi? >> well, morsi is the first democratically elected president that egypt has ever had.

he did not win by a large margin but did he win. instead of trying to governor in a consensus fashion recognizing that he did not win by a large margin recognizing that there still isn't a parliament, there are going to be elections later this spring, instead of trying to put together a national unity government, having opposition forces in his cabinet and so for the, he has governed as a muslim brother. he has the religious right in all the key positions and he has alienated people this way. >> cenk: it's really interesting because on the other hand israel seems to be fairly happy with him, so are we. we send in more aid and military weapons to help him. that's something you might not necessarily expect. he's deep muslim brotherhood in domestic policies of egypt but externally seems to be saying the right things. >> externally he has not rocked the boat. i think washington and tel aviv

want him not to rock the boat, so they're treating him with kid gloves in a way. but i i think he did put enormous pressure on benjamin netanyahu not to send troops into gaza. he is an ambiguous figure with regard to washington and israel. they're suspicious of him. they're caution, cautious, but he's all they got the only legitimate force in egypt. now he's undermining his legitimacy with these emergency decrees and so forth. >> cenk: then we go to an organization called black block which is not much of an organization because they have no chain of command. let me have "time" magazine describe it a little bit for you. they boast that they're willing

to use force against islamists who have attacked the protesters in the past or against police who crackdown on demonstrations. the youths with faces hidden under black masks have fought against police. we have the muslim brotherhood. then this black block, oh boy and they were just labeled today as terrorists. what do we make of black block and what implications could that have on egyptian. >> it's really a recent development on all sides. that is to say when there were protests in the way morsi pushed through a new constitution, there were peaceful demonstrators outside of the presidential palace. they were attacked by muslim brothers who formed an informal militia for this purpose.

there are elements in the opposition that attack government buildings that have set fire to headquarters of the muslim brotherhood in cairo and in the provinces. so you had kind of vigilante action but the brotherhood is very well organized. it's cadre, they've been at this for a long time. they know each other. apparently some of the leftest youth have declared that they'll set up this anarchist protection unit for the secular demonstrators against muslim of brotherhood thugs. >> if you're black mask it makes it so easy for the government sending in people also in black mask claiming to be on your side but instigating so they can clamp down on you. it seems like a tinderbox in so many different ways. syria, on the other hand, has

already exploded. we have 60,000 people killed since the up rising began in syria. nobody is doing anything about it. they were recently talking about what if it was israel. then you see people might not come to help. oh come on, everybody knows if it was israel we would have been there years ago. but what are we supposed to do about syria given what a mess it is? >> there is nothing that anybody can do about syria. it's just a train wreck that will go unfolding this way. russia and china are blocking u.n. security council solution. there is no legal framework for use of force. anybody way nobody wants to put their hands in this hornet's nest. what is really happening in syria is that the rebel fighters are close to taking the entirety of the north of the country. there is one major air base they're trying to take, and they

could well succeed. they take these bases and then loot them for arms. once the bases are gone, then they have no way of sending help up there and they'll lose the north. then we'll cut off the rest of the country. so if they succeed in doing that, then regime can't be resupplied and it will crumble. this is a logistical battle going on and that's why it's so vicious into. >> cenk: there is now a wildcard in syria where do they fall in the middle of this conflict. >> there are about 2 million kurd in a population of 22 million. i don't think they're a big consideration for syria. some of them have been neutral in this war. others have joined in the

opposition against the regime. a lot of them were stripped of their syrian citizenship by the regime. but for turkey they're nervous-making it's feared by turkey that they'll become radicalized by the civil war in syria, and they might give safe haven to the kurdish working party which the kurdish consider a terrorist group. they're a factor, you about not an overwhelming one on the scene scene. >> cenk: norm calm ski recently wrote do you think assad's government is like to fall in syria? >> i think the trend lines are clearly against it. how long it takes is the real question. when you start to have your military bases fall to rebels, this is a very bad sign.

and in recent weeks they have not been taken back by the government. they're just falling permanently. it's inch by inch. it's incremental and it's excruciating to see this unfold. i think we'll go to several tens of thousands more dead before it's over. >> cenk: professor juan cole thank you for joining us on "the young turks." we appreciate your expertise. when we come back we'll look at domestic politics, what is happening on immigration reform and an interesting question in massachusetts as to who will be the interim senator. we'll discuss. >> abb your philosophy, sir? >> what does that mean? >> anybody but b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b you know who's coming on to me now? you know the kind of guys who do like verse mortgage commercials? those types are coming on to me all the time now. >> she gets the comedians laughing... >> that's hilarious! >> ...and the thinkers thinking. >> okay, so there's wiggle-room in the ten commandments is what

you're telling me. >> you would rather deal with ahmadinejad then me. >> absolutely! >> and so would mitt romeny. >> she's joy behar. >> and the best part is that current will let me say anything. what the hell were they thinking? >> only on current tv.

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turks"." and paul waldman he's contributing editor for "the prospect." thank you for joining us, paul, we appreciate it. >> my pleasure. >> cenk: first immigration. the group of bipartisan senators came out and said they wanted to do immigration reform. the president spoke about it. let me show you. >> obama: the good news is for the first time in many years republicans and democrats seem ready to tackle this problem together. members of both parties in both chambers are actively working on a solution. yesterday a bipartisan group of senators announced their principles for comprehensive immigration reform is very much in line with the principles i proposed and campaigned on for the last few years. >> cenk: michael, let me start with you and then paul, i want to talk to about that interesting provision in there.

i love when politicians deny that something is about politics. they released right before obama was set to give a speech on immigration the white house said oh no, no, we're not worried about that. it wasn't political. but it appears that obama backed off his specific proposals and is going with a bipartisan group that the bipartisan group obviously did that to head off the president to give some credit to the republicans but then why did the democrats play along with that? >> it looks like reviewing a scooby doo. they did this and they did this and they did this. it's framework. it's not legislation. it's not a bill. they got together and discussed things. then you see this outlier of marco rubio. everyone is trying to stake their ground right now where they want to be in immigration. the president is saying if you don't pass anything, you're going to get me. it's the president that we haven't seen other than as a

campaigner. >> cenk: paul, what do you think? is this going to work? are republicans going to get an advantage here or be able to neutralize the advantage that democrats have with the latinos by jumping ahead of the president. >> that's been built up not only the course of weeks or months but for many years. the republicans are really caught in a familiar dilemma right now. they're doing this, actually thinking of compromising with this president whom they hate so much because they see it in their interest, and they got shellacked among latinos and they realize they're not going to survive as a party if they don't do something like that. still they're being pulled by the base of their party. today marco rubio went on the rush limbaugh talk show to almost apologize and assure limbaugh if it didn't turn out how republicans wanted it, he would pull out of it.

and so you're still seeing this tension within the republican party. the establishment, if you will, knows what they have to do. they have to come up with something to show latino voters that they're not just anti-immigrant, but they still have to overcome the base of their own to do it successfully. >> one thing that we should all remember, the three of us should remember is that in 1986, the people who got amnesty then have come of age as american citizens. they're part of the electorate that the republicans are trying to get right now. marco rubio will definitely run in 2016, and he's trying to play this chess game. he's the one who is in the most interesting position in all of this. >> cenk: remember everyone who did amnesty in 1986, ronald " "legend" reagan. and paul, to your point, rush limbaugh who is, i'm going to defeat this thing. rubio comes out and says, you're

so brilliant, thank you for giving us immigration reform. rush limbaugh softening when he sees an attractive young republican in his studio, i don't know if he was in his studio when he talked to him but paul, do you think the requirement to speak english might be a good thing in the bill why? >> yeah, it has no practical importance but it's vital politically. this wave of immigration these people are going to follow the same pattern in terms of language acquisition that every wave of immigration has followed the first generation that comes as adults does not learn english very well. the next generation is bilingual because they're spike their first language at home and english everywhere else and then the third generation that follows, they speak only english. it's important i think to give reassurance to people. americans are ambivalent about this. you can't fit most americans into a pro immigrant or

anti-immigrant box. most people acknowledge that immigration makes us stronger andand immigration brings the values that give america vitality. but when they go to the drugstore and they hear spanish beak spoken around them and they feel alienateed in their home home. what a provision like that does it says to them these immigrants are not going to take over your town. they're going to become american the same way your grandparents did. even if it doesn't have practical import it's a measure to reassure people that they don't need to feel threatened. that they can kind of play to the better angels of their own natures. >> cenk: i feel that. i lived in miami for three years. people who would get mad at me for not speaking spanish. i don't know spanish. don't get mad. i understand that inclination. i want to move onto the next topic. the former top adviser for mitt romney in the state of iowa. he said younger people want to move past the old arguments on

the culture wars. frankly the culture wars are over and the republicans largely lost. wow, michael flag of surrender. >> it comes in the context of tom harkin stepping down and not wanting to lose that seat. it's too important to us. we have an opportunity to send another republican to the senate with charles grassley, and we don't want to blow it. i as chairman of the party say we lost these wars. let's not be stupid this year. >> cenk: what do you think paul. i think guy marriage is indisputable and i war on drugs is indisputable. the republicans are lost. the democrats have won. the tide of history is on our side. but what about abortion, the republicans are still talking about birth control. it seems to be a clear mistake but the key issue is abortion. >> yes look, the culture war is as old as the republic.

the only reason why it recedes at i'm is if republicans and conservatives feel it's not to their advantage. gay marriage was to their advantage for a while now that it's their disadvantage they're not going to talk about it any more. their position on solve visuals, they lost the younger generation, but i guarantee you five or ten years from now they'll come up with a new bunch of issues to renew the culture war with. i think it will always be with us. >> cenk: finally i want to get to what is happening in massachusetts. barney frank is the only one who publicly said he would like to be the interim senator. he won't run again but just the interim senator. a reporter ask patrick duvall this. >> frank barney is the only one who has said he wants the job.

>> is abb your philosophy? >> what does that mean? >> anybody but barney. >> no, don't be like that. >> cenk: i didn't prepare you for this. i'm putting you on the spot. who is going to be the new senator from massachusetts paul go. >> two words. senator ustregski. >> you can't beat that answer. >> i would say bobby orr. no, i can't beat it, but i can give a really dull answer to who i think it's going to be. >> cenk: go for it. >> his former chief of stat mo. >> cenk: really. >> you could have asked me first. i was going to say bobby orr. >> cenk: no you weren't. >> i was. >> cenk: no, paul gets the credit. >> all right. >> cenk: i think it should be barney frank. michael shure and paul waldman. thank you for joining us. i appreciate it. when we come back we have a lot

more ahead for you guys, including the nfl not being being--it's actually a non-profit so it's not for-profit. it's crazy. plus the great grandson of l. ron hubbard joins us on "the young turks" to tell us the secrets of scientology. >> every family has their black sheep. on my mother's side our black sheep was a shepherd who enslaved his own flock. the king king of the kong. the man who made (vo) current tv gets the weekdays 9am eastern. >> i'm a slutty bob hope. >> you are. >> the troops love me. the sweatshirt is nice and all but i could use a golden lasso. (vo) only on current tv.

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>> cenk: jamie dewolf is the great grand child of l. ron

hubbard the founder of scientology. he tells a part of his story. let's check it out. >> do you know how you really get rich. start a religion. a year later he kept to his word. wrote dienetcs. until you could pay to flat line your blind mind for a fee. he went from pennyies to profits. l. ron knew if you don't have fact then you need faith. he turned his science into a reasonable and scientology was born. >> cenk: that performance is known as the god and the man. jamie dewolf joins us in san francisco. he's self described writer and art. your father has a falling out with the church of scientology what happens next.

>> we was actually one of the top members of the church in the early part of its era. even in the movie called "the master" they have a character based off him. he was the number two guys for a while. there was a huge falling out. he was watching his father becoming more and more unhinged, and then he left to divorce himself and get completely away from this entire monster that has dad was creating. near the end of his life he actually started to fight back. he ended up battling his dad who shared his name, pretty much until his death. it devoured both of them in the end. >> cenk: a lot of people talk about when you leave the church that they intimidate you and i know you talk about that. how? what do they do to your grandfather? and when you left the church what did they do to you? >> for them it was two decades

of non-stop harassment. each of down aunts and uncles are born in different cities because they were constantly on the run. he felt like he was hunted his entire life. he would come home and there would be an envelope of pictures of my aunts and uncles playing alone on playgrounds to remind him he could be touched. he was constantly pursued. it's just a constant sense that they wanted to have that they could get you at any point. and instill with you a strong sense of fear that you're always being watched. your phones would be tapped. the mail would be taken. private detectives hounding you. certainly in the year 2000 the first time i performed against them they came after me immediately, and they actually showed up at my mom's house. she recognized them right away from their kind of general

c.i.a. from space-like vibe. and ended up kicking them off the porch. i don't think they actually understood that i was a direct descendant because they were really shocked when they ran into my mom. i think they maybe thought i was some random maniac yelling in the streets or something. once they discovered my mom as well, they realized that they had a tricky situation. since then i think i've been lucky i've been in the spotlight, it's like a little less of a bull bull's eye i think. >> cenk: they harass you and come after you in all the ways you describe. in some degrees it's been a bluff. have they delivered on these threats of possibly doing something to your knowledge? >> not to me personally, not yet. i'm sure that may even happen today. i'm sure they know where i live, and they have a dossier and file on me. every time i speak out i put

myself in danger. they have so many people coming out of the woodwork they have so many fires to put out. paul cooper who was goinging to jail with bomb threats operation snow white the amount of dirt and dirty trickery they've done to people, they try to destroy people in every way that they could in terms of framing people, blackmailing people and dirty tricks that they could to destroy their critics. they have a long legacy of that. in fact, shows like yourself are really brave and ballsy to even put this on the air because for decades the media itself was gun shy going against the cult. they would be sued immediately. they would have their trash gone through and their journalists and reporters would be hunted. there was a turning point in the past five to ten years where the pair time has shifted from episodes of south park doing

open mockery to anonymous declaring war on the cult that it's empowered people to stop being muscled into silence. they helped me as well. i remember when i saw the south park episode i thought, it's on now. >> cenk: jamie, you mentioned you're a little bit in the spotlight now so you have a degree of protection from that. what about somebody like katie holmes who is massively in the spotlight. would they try to intimidate here as well? do you think the marriage or divorce was any way affected by the church? >> i don't think we'll ever hear katie holmes true statement on scientology. that will be a subject she'll dodge that bullet for a long time. i think it's impossible for scientology not to be a factor in the divorce considering her child she was about to turn the age that they start auditing. they start this system of brainwashing. they start imprinting your brain with all of this l. ron hubbard

vocabulary and they imprint it in your brain at a very early age. that was about to happen. katie holmes handled it in a very smart way. just quickly sneaking out the back door in some way and tying it off like a tourniquet. but tom cruise is like damn near the pope of scientology these days. it's not possible that it's not a factor in their relationship. when he's celebrating his birthday on the same ship that l. ron hubbard is escaping many governments on its impossible to discount it as a major factor, but i don't think we'll ever hear a true story. >> cenk: do you think they'll leave suri cruise alone? >> i think the fallback they've had over the whole divorce and the fact that the media is stepping up in terms of reporting the damage, the abuse and legacy and destruction that scientology has youth wrought on

people, i think they'll back off. as for tom cruise, i don't know. what a lot of people don't understand, when you do your confessions which they call auditing, they record all that and they keep it in a filing cabinet. they have all your dirt. they do not have a psychiatric legal statute where you're protected in any way. they have all your dirt. so when thee celebrities try to leave, they can't. they have every juicy tidbit, and it takes a long time for any of them to actually step out and flee. john travolta will probably die scientologist, so will tom cruise. >> stay one more segment for us because i want to ask you if you think this religion is done for in the long run how they keep people and i'm interested in how they keep the juicy tidbits..............................

>> cenk: all right, we're back on "the young turks." we're talking to jamie dewolf, the great grandson of l. ron hubbard, the founder of scientology. jamie, you talk about in your work how your great grandfather apparently hid thousands of dollars in shoe boxes, etc. do you think for him this was all about the money? >> i think that l. ron was not all about the money. that was a precipitating factor. he was shocked himself with how much money he made with dienetics. he was building this track in front of him and he was selling secrets, secrets of immortality and all this super human power alien and god knows what. but then at a certain point he was not making super humans and everything was based on lies and stuff he had completely conjured out of thin air. then at a certain point he had to keep inventing new steps new

levels and new layers to keep people on this hook and dangling a carrot that you could never sink your teeth on. over time he wrote himself in the mythic outlaw character that he always wanted to be and had always been writing about "b" in all of his science fiction books. you look at blood brother indians and nuclear air physicists and hollywood script writer, and none of that was true at all. it's absolutely--it's hilarious absurd when you put it down on paper. but what he was was one of the bizarre and charismatic con men in the last century. he got away with all of it. he never saw a day of jail. he died in hiding. he traded his entire shadow misfit army that surrounds him and still hunts down his enemies even after he's dead. i think even the darkest side of

him would have gloaded it. >> cenk: is the main trick, you're on the path of self discovery, but at the same time they're revealing secrets to use against you later to keep you from leaving the church. >> it's electrified hypnosis. you're basically holding a lie detector. i'm not going to say that it doesn't work. but it reads your blood pressure, it's hooked up to your energy levels. so when you say something and you have some sort of reaction everybody agrees that a polygraph test works. but the early steps of auditing are different from where they go. and they call it the bridge, right. as you move up on the steps of auditing, that's when you start to learn the deep dirty secrets of the alien souls that are possessing your body that are

transformed by spaceships floating in the sky. but it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn about that. that's why the critics as myself, and zenou is in in a cage somewhere on planet earth. so zenou is a threat and something for you to be terrified. >> cenk: i'm scared of him. >> i'm terrified myself. either zenou or tom cruise is going to take me up. what i told you l. ron hubbard told you that you would catch pneumonia and die or have a nervous break down and throw yourself out of a window if you heard about zenou because your brain is not ready to hear it. that's why critics and myself are so damaging to the church and the cult because we're throwing this stuff out there and asking the world do you want to pay to find this out? is it worth it to you to move up this bridge?

i think for a lot of celebrities once you hit that level you're in so deep. they own so many of your secrets that it's difficult to get out of of the lion's mouth at that point. >> cenk: one last question for you. how much longer does the church of scientology have? >> a cult is only a religion that hasn't been around long enough. they want to stick in there long enough just like mitt romney could have had our first mormon president. they want to stick in there so a scientologist could be president. it's just a matter of time. they have the money but they don't have any more secrets to sell. so this year the last year has been some of the most di decisive at athat they have hey ever had in their history. i don't know if they'll fully collapse but this may be the tidal wave where they have to change everything. >> cenk: thank you for joining "the young turks." >> thanks for having me back. >> cenk: we'll be back with the story of the nfl and how they completely avoid taxes by

calling themselves a non-profit. >> the nfl has a strong lobbying shop here in washington, d.c. that is why they keep their tax breaks. that's why it's going to be so hard to getetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetet

desmond tutu said a quote that is one of my favorite quotes. "we are tied together in a web of humanity. i am a person only through you. i can only be a person only through you." that really resonates me and drives my work. the world is becoming an incredibly connected place. mobile phones are really driving that connection. at kiva, we run an internet marketplace. people can lend to other people for the purpose of starting a small business, going to school or a variety of other good causes. you can go to kiva.org and you can see pictures and profiles of people from over sixty countries all across the world.

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incredibly powerful force that can spread to every country in the world. >> cenk: we're back on "the young turks." you know the super bowl is coming up on sunday. the nfl pays no taxes at all. the nfl itself. they're a non-profit. non-profit are supposed to be things like united way. red cross things that are meant to help society. who is the nfl helping? don't get me wrong i love the game, but really, a non-profit? a local station in pittsburgh w wpxi has the report on this. >> check out this scoreboard after the game as the nation's debt soars, a new report accuses the nfl the financial

unsportsman-like conduct for insisting that it's a non-profit organization in its filings to the irs. it keeps them were paying $91 million in federal tax. that could be frustrating for fans who pay taxes and pay $7.50 for beer and $99.99 for a jersey at an online store. >> cenk: let me read the part of the tax code that apply to the nfl. section 05201 501 c 6 and professional football leagues which are not organized for profit and no part of the net earnings--notice it does not say basketball leagues or hockey leagues. but specifically football

leagues. that's called lobbying. over $1 billion in assets, and $9 billion in in assets for subsidiaries and teams overall. so that gets taxed. don't get me wrong the seattle seahawks, the pittsburgh steelers, they get taxed but the nfl makes all this money every year, and that does not get taxed. what do they use the money for? paying their executives. of course, it's america. commissioner rog good deal makes $11.6 million. and vp of media gets more than the commissioner, $12.2 million. the former communicationer tagliabue still gets $8.5 million. and look at the nfl much more higher than that. let's bring an expert on this.

david goodfriend. good to talk to you. i haven't talked to you in a while. >> you too cenk. thanks for having me on into absolutely. tell me how they're getting away with this. >> this goats to sports leagues getting tremendous public subsidies. don't stop with the tax code. take a look, for example at antitrust laws in the united states. there is an explicit exemption for professional sports leagues. they can negotiate a contract with broadcasters high school colluding to get together--while colluding to get together, that's illegal unless you get a special exemption in the law. they get billions of dollars. not just $100 million of missed taxes but billions of dollars of subsidies for stadiums, and that goes straight to the bottom

line. i'm chairman of a group that we call sports fans coalition, a real non-profit, i might add and what we try to advocate is getting fans to seize the tables and make sure that the public gets something back. for example what do you get as a result of the nfl having a non-profit tax status, you get nothing. hey, nfl you only get that non-profit tax status if you stop blocking out games. the nfl today on individual teams, if there is no sellout they black out the game. you've supported the team. your tax dollars go to building the stadium. and then you get the game cut off from you. what we would like to see is tying these big public benefits that professional sports get to something coming back to the fans. some benefit coming back to the

public. >> cenk: and by the way, they put that $1 billion or multiple billion dollar public on the public airwaves, which the tv station didn't pay for either. >> right. >> cenk: listen, the steelers and the 49ers are-for--profit but the nfl is just coordinating those teams and they're non-profit. is there some validity to that argument? >> well, you started to read the applicable language from section 501 c 6 of the tax code. here is my special favorite. i know guys like you and me we get all watery eyed when we read the tax code but to be ex-tempt, they must be devoted to improving business conditions of one or more lines of business as distinguished from performing particular services for individual persons so say like that commissioner you were talking about. no part of thenings may benefit any private shareholder or individual. in other words what the tax

code is saying you cannot operate like a business in order to qualify yet here is an entity that is in charge of $9 billion enterprise paying it's executives way way more than any other non-profit. if it looked like a duck and it talks like a duck, it's probably a duck. the problem that we have here is that there has been immense lobbying pressure. you mentioned the word lobbying, and it's true. ever since the 19 the 60s since the sports broadcasting act of 1961 was enacted we see them come in and say we're speaking for fans. we're speaking for the communities. you need to give us what we need in order to function. here at the consumer level the fans want to push back and say wait a second, those guys do not speak for the fan or the community. we do. the fans do. we should have a voice of our own. >> cenk: all right david. great point. thank you for joining us. we appreciate it.

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